Artist's Hand-Printed Fantasy Currency Sparks Curiosity in Reunion

Pascal Ibanes prints money. Not real money, but something close enough to make people stop and ask questions.

Working from his apartment in Reunion, the graphic artist designs, prints, and cuts each fictional banknote by hand. The results look convincingly like legal tender. They carry color schemes, serial numbers, and formats that mirror authentic currency. They are worth nothing in any shop, yet people cannot seem to put them down.

That reaction is precisely the point. “People ask what country this is from, whether they can actually buy something with it. I’m happy when they get caught up in the game,” Ibanes explains. His method rests on one firm rule: no existing currency is ever reproduced. “There are no copies. Every banknote I create starts from a blank slate,” he says. The distinction matters both artistically and legally, keeping his work firmly in the realm of original creation rather than imitation.

The production process stays entirely in his hands. Ibanes manages conception, printing, and cutting in his own space, then organizes finished designs into catalogued collections online. That direct control over every stage is what gives each piece its consistency and detail.

Meanwhile, the commercial world has taken notice. A restaurant in Sainte-Marie became his first professional client, ordering roughly sixty pieces for 200 euros. Henri Ganova, co-manager of Marmiton restaurant, recognized the potential immediately. “It draws customers who wonder what it is. Everyone handles money, so it intrigues them,” he says. His co-manager Anne-Marie Boyer adds a practical dimension: the fictional notes work as promotional materials that people actually hold onto. “It’s different from usual advertising. It has the phone number and restaurant name, but people won’t throw this away,” she notes. A customer named Corinne captured the first-encounter experience plainly: “It’s pretty, well-made, but I had no idea what it was.”

That gap between recognition and confusion is where the object does its work. A flyer gets discarded. A banknote, even a fictional one, gets examined, passed around, and kept.

Ibanes sees the format expanding well beyond restaurant promotions. He envisions applications in event ticketing, tourism merchandise, and specialized payment instruments for particular venues or occasions. What started as a graphic design project has grown into a functioning business model, one that sits at the intersection of collectible art and practical communication tool.

Whether the broader Reunion market sustains that ambition remains the open question. The Marmiton experiment suggests appetite exists. Whether other businesses will follow the restaurant’s lead, and how far Ibanes can scale a process that is, by design, entirely hands-on, will determine how far this fictional currency actually travels.

More information about Ibanes’ work is available at https://la1ere.franceinfo.fr/reunion/de-nouveaux-billets-fictifs-a-la-reunion-des-coupures-originales-imaginees-par-pascal-ibanes-1728448.html.